Barclay, Alexander - Sukanta Chaudhuri (essay date 1989)
Sukanta Chaudhuri (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: Chaudhuri, Sukanta. “English Pastoral before Spenser.” In Renaissance Pastoral and Its English Developments, pp. 113-31. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
[In this excerpt, Chaudhuri suggests that Barclay's Eclogues represent significant pastoral works before Spenser's because of their emphasis on the hardship of a shepherd's life.]
BARCLAY'S ECLOGUES: SATIRE AND THE SUFFERING RUSTIC
Roughly between 1500 and 1513,1 Alexander Barclay wrote five Eclogues which must be accounted the most important English ones before Spenser's. They are the reverse of Arcadian. Rather, they emphasize the poverty and hardship of the shepherd's life, and are full of satirical and didactic passages. In fact, the first three eclogues are based upon De curialium miseriis, a prose satire of court life by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II. The two other pieces...
[The entire page is 3966 words long]
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